Jack-of-all trades Jay Miller writes about boxing, high school sports and music. A native of West Bridgewater, he was captain of his high school track team. He played football at Stonehill College. He also played guitar, bass, sax, bongos and drums.
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Jack-of-all trades Jay Miller writes about boxing, high school sports and music. A native of West Bridgewater, he was captain of his high school track team. He played football at Stonehill College. He also played guitar, bass, sax, bongos and drums. He and a friend had a duo, covering Dylan and Creedence. While in grad school at Boston University, he spent many free afternoons at Fenway Park. He covered Marvin Hagler from bouts at Brockton High to Las Vegas, has written for The Ring, Fight Fax and Boxing Illustrated. He began reviewing music for The Patriot Ledger in 1986, along with all kinds of sports. He's been on the PawSox beat since about 1998. He once met Bo Diddley at the old K-K-K-Katies in Kenmore Square, and still wonders whatever happened to The Ultimate Spinach.

The Boston Red Sox may not be certain whether lefty Felix Doubront is ready for a return to the big league club, but the Charlotte Knights would love to see him go. Doubront held the Knights hitless over five innings Sunday afternoon, fanning ten in his second rehab start for the Pawtucket Red Sox, before 8226 Father's Day fans at McCoy Stadium.

Doubront had gone 4.2 innings in his previous start for the PawSox, last Tuesday, when he allowed two runs. But Sunday the Knights were swinging and missing most of the time, as Doubront's breaking balls were handcuffing them, and even his fastball was effective, and back to its customary 88-90 miles-per-hour velocity.

Club officials professed no schedule for the southpaw's return to Fenway Park, but stadium employees were shaking hands with the pitcher and wishing him the best of luck, when he left with a group of family after the game, appearing like it might well have been his final Pawtucket start.

The only downside to Doubront's memorable effort was that the Pawtucket bullpen blew the game, specifically lefty Drake Britton, who gave up a two-out, two-run home run to Charlotte's number nine batter, right fielder Blake Tekotte, to send the home team down to a 2-1 defeat.

Of course, Charlotte, the top farm club for the Chicago White Sox, only improved to 24-46 with the win, and the Knights came in batting a paltry .231. But since anyone who can hit at Pawtucket is probably already in Boston, the PawSox themselves are only hitting.240 as a team, so Doubront's gem wasn't the only good Pawtucket pitching effort to go to waste this season.

The two BoSox hitters rehabbing at Pawtucket this week, Will Middlebrooks and Shane Victorino, had both played Saturday and were not in the lineup, or even in the ballpark, Sunday. Both are expected to be back in the Pawsox lineup when the team opens a four-game series at Rochester Monday night.

Righthander Matt Barnes, making his first-ever relief appearance after 59 starts in his minor league career, was effective following Doubront with three scoreless innings, allowing just three hits. Britton allowed a one-out single to DH Matt Tuiasosopo, before Tekotte's game-winning blast.

But while Doubront was baffling the Knights, Pawtucket hitters managed just two hits all day. The home team manufactured its only run in the first inning, as Mookie Betts led off with a walk, stole second, took third on Mike McCoy's bunt hit, and scored on a wild pitch.† That was one of three wild pitches thrown by Charlotte starter Tommy Hanson, the former Brave and Angel. Hanson still has his 94-mph heater, he just doesn't know where it's going, and managed to toss 69 pitches in just three innings, only 39 of them strikes.

But Hanson only gave up that lone run, and three Charlotte relievers kept Pawtucket frustrated with a blizzard of strikeouts. By the time closer Donnie Veal fanned Milton's Alex Hassan (with two on, via a walk and hit batsman) in the ninth, Knight's hurlers had whiffed 16 PawSox on the day.

But the bigger story was Doubront's mastery, and his progress from the shoulder bruising that he is ostensibly rehabbing at McCoy. The unspoken undercurrent of course, is that the hurler badly needed to find some consistency too.

"Felix showed better stuff all around," said Pawtucket manager Kevin Boles. "I felt his breaking ball was really crisp today, and his fastball had picked up velocity from his last start. He did get out of his delivery a couple times, but I thought he was very impressively able to get right back in and correct it. He was pounding the ball up in the zone, and he has a lot of swing-and-miss type stuff that we saw today. I'd say this was a big sign of improvement from his last outing."

PawSox pitching coach Rich Sauveur, who naturally, had mentored Doubront when the lefty played for the triple-A team a couple years back, made one trip to the mound in the fifth inning, when a brief bout of wildness led to two of the four walks he allowed.

"It looked to me like he was getting really long in the back (of his delivery)," said Sauveur. "I just reminded him to get more compact. That's something he'd done when he was here that I remembered, that he sometimes gets out of his best delivery. He'd even asked me to look out for that today, which was good that he knows what he needs to pay attention to. I was very pleased with Felix' outing today--he threw the ball really well."

"I think in his first start here, Felix was more pacing himself," said Sauveur. "I think today, in the third-fourth-fifth innings, he threw much better today. I had talked with him before the game, and told him to just let it go, all out, from the first pitch, because that's what they want up there (in Boston). I think that's what he did, and that's what made a big difference today."

Still, there was no official word on whether Doubront will make another start for the PawSox, or how soon his return to Fenway Park will take place.

"We have no timetable for Felix," said Boles. "At this time, we don't know yet what their plans are for him."